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Christmas Music in Colonial Days

by John Turner

Photos by Dave Doody

The family of Williamsburg's silversmith James Geddy
Jr.—portrayed by Suzanna Winder, Caroline Hollis, Frances Burroughs, Terry
Yemm, Amy Player, and Grace MacArthur—joins in Christmas song around a parlor
spinet.

The
year is 1774. The colony is
Virginia. It is the middle of December. Williamsburg's George Wythe, his wife,
Elizabeth, and their household are gathered in the parlor around a blazing fire
lustily singing the words of Isaac Watts's best known Christmas hymn, "Joy to
the World." Theoretically, this could have happened, but as far as we know, it
did not. Even if it had, chances are we wouldn't recognize the tune they were
singing. The melody we know did not get married to Watts's words until 1820.
Wythe did not leave behind a diary or journal chronicling his activities for
December 1774. Of those of his contemporaries who did keep diaries or journals,
many do not mention Christmas on, before, or after the twenty-fifth of
December. In general, eighteenth-century Virginians left us scant information
about the observance and celebration of Christmas, and Christmas music, as we
think of it, is a more elusive subject.

Songs with a Christmas theme can be
found as early as the fourth century—songs like Jesus refulsit omnium. The church developed chants,
litanies, and hymns to accompany worship celebrating the holy day of Christ's
birth. But these were in Latin and not generally the kinds of tunes Bing Crosby
would turn into million sellers. For centuries music associated with Christmas
struggled for quiet existence behind the scenes as the church tried to prohibit
holy day-linked celebrations that might lead to dancing. For more than five
hundred years now, the quintessential music of Christmas has been the carol, a
form based on dance music.

According to The Oxford Book of
Carols, "The carol
was in fact a sign ...of the emancipation of the people from the old
Puritanism which had for so many centuries suppressed the dance ...denounced
communal singing, and warred against the tendency of the people to disport
themselves in church on the festivals." Carols and ballads arose as forms in
the fifteenth century as popular music and showed the natural desire to use
music in everyday life to tell stories and inspire movement. One relatively early
but still recognizable carol appearing in a collection printed in 1521 is the
"Boar's Head Carol," traditionally sung every Christmas at Queen's College,
Oxford. By tradition, a scholar from the college, confronted in the woods by a
wild boar, defended himself with the only weapon at hand, which happened to be
a copy of Aristotle. He thrust it down the beast's throat, choking it to death.
A classic example of the pen being mightier than the sword. "Coventry Carol,"
dating from 1591 or earlier, is often associated with the Pageant of the
Shearmen and Tailors and the biblical story of the slaughter of the innocents
in King Herod's attempt to eliminate the infant Messiah.

Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church puts on
Christmas holiday concerts for parishioners and guests.

So,
from the fifteenth century to the
eighteenth century, would popular music be allowed to develop unimpeded? Well,
no—not exactly. The fifteenth century wasn't the end of governmental and
ecclesiastical pressure against popular music, even music celebrating the birth
of Christ. The use and popularity of carols increased throughout the sixteenth
century and into the seventeenth century, only to come to a screeching halt, at
least in English-speaking countries, with the dissolution of the British
monarchy. In 1647 Parliament abolished the celebration of Christmas, forty
years after the establishment of the settlement in Jamestown. The "No
Christmas" policy was reiterated by Parliament in 1652 with the following
resolution: "That no observation shall be had of the five and twentieth day of
December commonly called Christmas-Day; nor any solemnity used or exercised in
churches upon the day in respect thereof." Though this policy was not enforced
in Virginia, it is easy to speculate that this is at least one of the reasons
that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonists were fairly close-mouthed
about the celebration of Christmas. In New England colonies, Christmas was
ignored not only in the seventeenth century but well into the nineteenth.
Boston public schools were still open on Christmas Day in the 1870s and missing
work on the twenty-fifth of December was grounds for dismissal.

The eighteenth century did, however,
offer relief from this Puritan Grinchness in the form of hymns written by
Watts, the so-called Liberator of the English Hymn, and the flood of hymn
writers who followed his lead in what has been referred to as the Golden Age of
Hymns. Watts published his most famous Christmas hymn, "Joy to the World,"
based on Psalm 98, in 1719. Here is where the nomenclature can become confusing.
Any group of friends or acquaintances that venture out this Christmas season to
"go caroling" is likely to include "Joy to the World" among its offerings. But
it is not a carol in the fifteenth-century sense. It is a carol only to the
degree that in modern usage the word is used to denote any religious or
traditional song that has been for some time in the body of those pieces
typically sung during the Christmas season. This repertoire now includes some
old carols, some newer carols, and lots of hymns that we now think of as carols
though they are really hymns. Watts did not write or suggest any tune to sing
his version of Psalm 98 to. Any tune that fits the meter of the poem will
work—which means for example, that the tune "Arlington," written by Thomas Arne
in 1762, can be used for "Joy to the World" and "Amazing Grace." Don't try this
for the first time before a crowd—you'll find yourself forgetting words you've
known since you were three, when you try to put them to a different tune.

What tune one uses, of course, makes
a difference in the popularity and memorability of a hymn or carol. "Joy to the
World" sung to the tune "Arlington" is reasonable and nice but it is not
inspiring. Watts's words had to wait for a hundred years, long after his death,
to be paired with the music we find so inspiring today. Dr. Lowell Mason set
the words to its current tune in the 1820s, and tune and words have stayed
together since. So did eighteenth-century Virginians ever sing "Joy to the
World" during the Christmas season? Well, they could have, but not in
Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church, accompanied by one of the few church
organs in Virginia at the time, and not to the tune we associate with the
words. Plantation tutor Philip Fithian's account of his Christmas Eve, 1775,
admits an admiration of Mr. Watts's hymns, and the enjoyment of singing them in
good company that evening, but doesn't say whether hymns we associate with
Christmas were included in the evening's entertainment.

Jock Darling invites holiday-season guests to
the Wren Chapel at the College of William and Mary for programs of organ music.

Another Christmas carol-hymn that
could have been sung at the hypothetical Wythe family Christmas is "Hark the
Herald Angels Sing" by the most prolific writer of English hymns, Charles
Wesley. A generation younger than Watts, Wesley was the youngest of eighteen
children born to a Church of England minister and his wife. It is said that
Wesley wrote an average of ten verses every day for more than fifty years. He
and his brother John Wesley published fifty-six collections of hymns in three
years. Charles Wesley's total output of hymns depends on how you count. Some of
his hymns started out with thirty or more verses only to be converted into six
or seven hymns by the editing of his brother. Taking these kinds of conversions
into consideration, Charles Wesley wrote 8,989 hymns compared to 697 by Watts,
more than 400 by Phillip Doddridge, and 280 by John Newton, the author of
"Amazing Grace."

Once again, the original version
wouldn't be recognizable to many listeners today. In the first place, when
Wesley published this hymn in 1739, its first words were "Hark! How All the
Welkin Rings." "Welkin," which means "vault of heaven," was already an
antiquated word in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Wesley's
brother and other friends were not shy about altering his works when they
thought it would serve a good purpose. John Wesley frequently changed words and
theological implications, and turned twenty verse hymns into five four-verse
hymns. The evangelist George Whitefield thought the word "welkin" would confuse
people and changed the first line of Wesley's hymn to "Hark the Herald Angels
Sing" and included it in his own anthology of hymns published in 1753.

And, as usual, no tune was
specified. The melody more often today paired with the hymn "Take My Life and
Let It Be" works with Wesley's words along with many others. "Hark the Herald"
was not set to the tune familiar today until 1855.

Which brings us again to a fairly exasperating question:
were there any songs being sung at Christmastime to tunes that we would
recognize today? The answer is: "We don't know for sure." Nevertheless, there
are some that in spite of the lingering Puritanical influences in the American
colonies are very likely to have been sung. One such tune would be
"Greensleeves."

"Greensleeves" is probably the
closest thing to a best seller anyone would have known in the eighteenth
century. More than two hundred years old by the 1770s, it was still a very
popular tune, and still is. But today's popular Christmas version, "What Child
Is This," was not written until well into the nineteenth century. Colonials
would have been familiar with a seventeenth-century song to the old tune called
"The Old Year Now Away Has Fled," which obviously has to do with the changing
year and not Christmas.

Other than that, "Deck the Halls,"
an old Welsh carol, may be a candidate for a song that we'd recognize, words
and tune, if we could travel to 1774. But it is the secular version of a carol
that begins, "Now the joyful bells a-ringing, All ye mountains, praise the
Lord!" The pertinent question is whether either version had been translated
into English in time for Wythe's 1774 sing- along—and the answer is probably
not.

But what of Fithian's journal entry
of Saturday, December 18, 1773: "Nothing is to be heard of in conversation, but
the Balls, the Fox-hunts, the fine entertainments, and the good fellowship,
which are to be exhibited at the approaching Christmas"? Fithian's association
with the family of Robert Carter of Nomini Hall gave him first-hand experience
of how Christmas was being kept by at least that particular gentry family in
1770s Virginia. Carter was playing an impressive array of musical instruments popular
at the time, including Benjamin Franklin's invention, the glass harmonica. For
Wednesday, December 22, 1773, Fithian wrote: "Evening Mr. Carter spent in
playing on the Harmonica. It is the first time I have heard the instrument. The
music is charming! He played, 'Water Parted from the Sea.'" This was a song
from the opera Artaxerxes, first performed in London in 1762. Fithian says of the
glass harmonica, "The notes are clear and inexpressibly soft, they swell, and
are inexpressibly grand. The sounds very much resemble the human voice, and in
my opinion they far exceed even the swelling organ." It is clear that there was
music at Christmas, but apparently not Christmas music.

The balls and possibly some of the
other entertainments no doubt had music provided by persons playing fiddles,
flutes, harpsichords, and other popular instruments. But if people were playing
music that they or we would consider particular to Christmas, no one bothered
to say so.

Today we think of Handel's Messiah as being a Christmas holiday
tradition, but the first performance was in April 1742 at the Music Hall on
Fishamble Street in Dublin. The performance was a benefit "for relief of the
Prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the support of Mercer's hospital in
Stephen's Street and of the charitable Infirmary on the Inns Quay...." The
review printed in the Dublin Journal was an indication of things to come, but not an indication
of how it would become entwined with modern holiday tradition.

On Tuesday last (13 April, 1742) Mr.
Handel's Sacred Grand Oratorio, the Messiah, was performed at the New
Musick-Hall in Fishamble-street; the best Judges allowed it to be the most
finished piece of Musick. Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it
afforded to the admiring crouded Audience. The Sublime, the Grand and the
Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving words composed to
transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear. It is but justice to Mr. Handel
that the World should know, he generously gave the Money arising from this
Grand Performance to be shared by the Society for relieving Prisoners, the
Charitable Infirmary, and Mercer's Hospital, for which they will ever
gratefully remember his Name. There were about 700 people in the room (built
for 600) and the sum collected for that Noble and Pious Charity amounted to
about A34,001.00 out of which A31,271 goes to each of the three great and pious
Chairities.

Handel not only created a timeless
work of art but delighted and satisfied the critics. So, when did Handel's Messiah make it to America? It was
performed in colonial America in 1770, two years before it was first performed
in Germany, Handel's home country. Once again, whisking ourselves to the Wythe
parlor in 1774, is it likely anyone was humming the "Hallelujah Chorus"? No.

Christmas was different in
eighteenth-century Virginia. Some celebrated and some did not. Music, singing,
and dancing were part of the festivities for those that celebrated. For the
most part, however, as far we know, it was the same music, singing, and dancing
that was taking place at most other times of colonial celebration.

The interior of the Wren Chapel.

Jock Darling plays the organ in the Wren Chapel.

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